BDI Furniture Corridor 8179 TV Stand, Chocolate Walnut

Very solid and elegant, well crafted. Furniture had a dent on one of the door. I contacted BDI, sent pictures of the dent, they were very cooperative and sent a replacement door quickly. Great customer service.

Giving this 5 stars because it is the finest piece of audio furniture I’ve ever seen. Very heavy, but assembly is simple and straight forward – took my wife and I maybe 45 minutes.

If this looks like a good solution for you, please also consider the limitations posed by this piece for those blessed/cursed with a large equipment footprint. My equipment footprint is reasonably substantial: Denon X3200 AVR, Surround Preamp, Network Media Player, Turntable and separate pre-amp, Gigabit Fibre Modem, DVR and Genie Wireless Hub, Smart Blu-ray Player, 10-Port Gigabit Switch, Bi-Wired Supertowers with LFE, 7.1 Surround speaker system, and 4 APC Media Center UPSes.

So we’re talking about a lot of full-sized rack designed equipment, a substantial amount of BAU wiring (interconnects, network cables, power supplies, etc.), PLUS around 40+ feet of thick cumbersome bi-wire speaker wire and feeds for the UPSs.

Bluntly, the capabilities of this cabinet are stretched to the limit when building out a system of this scope. The major limitations are as follows:

1) The depth of the cabinet is JUST ENOUGH to accommodate full-sized equipment.

2) The shelf in the center bay is fixed. It cannot be adjusted.

3) The load bearing capability of the shelf in the center bay is limited.

4) The back of the cabinet behind the center bay is fixed. It cannot be opened.

My original intent was to put the AVR and Preamp side-by-side in the top section of the center bay and the power supplies stacked in pairs on the bottom. This would give the shortest runs for most of the cables, and generally made sense. Despite carefully checking the manufacturers drawings (and having assumed issues 2-4 above weren’t the case), this strategy failed right off: The top shelf wasn’t capable of handling the weight of the components. Looking closer before abandoning the approach, I discovered I needed to raise the shelf an inch to clear the tops of the power supplies, and even if I could there wasn’t adequate access behind the rack to perform/maintain the wiring.

This forced the big stuff to of the outside sections, and caused an already difficult wire-up to become even more so. As in about two or three iterations of more so. It was like wiring a small car. From scratch. It was agony. Do note that if it wasn’t for my total aversion to dirty power and my total insistence that I shall never be bothered with a grid failure, the power supplies could be dropped from the build and things would get somewhat easier.

But…

It was worth it.

When technology-averse types routinely notice your audio cabinet first when walking into a large and well appointed space you’ll get the picture. It is massive, rich, elegant, and stunning. It runs cool, it accepts remote-signals without fuss (I went to all IP control, but whatever), and did I say it’s gorgeous?

Simply beautiful and simple. Very versatile with plenty of cable openings and room for bookshelf speakers in the side cabinets and room in the center for a center speaker or soundbar…all out of sight! Doesn’t seem to interfere with the audio quality, I’m sure technically it does, but for the type of listening in the living room, it’s fine. Sounds good, looks great with the wall mounted TV on the wall behind it. The wheels don’t work great on carpet, so we placed some of those plastic furniture slidders under them, temporarily, during set up. The back has slidding access doors with ventilation slots. Our wall is light colored, and since there is no heat in the sides (just holds speakers) we attached some small pieces of black, thin, cloth loosely on the back, to block the view of the wall while looking head on. If there was a heat generating piece of equipment, you could figure out something that would block the sight of the wall without impeding cooling. There are also nice ventilating slots on the floor of the cabinets and shelves. Love BDI designs.